Excerpted from a recent news item in the New York Times:An argument over texting at the movies ended in a cell phone user’s death on Monday afternoon when a retired police officer in the audience shot him at a theater near Tampa, Florida, the authorities said. The police officer got angry because the man in front of him was using his phone during the previews, despite being asked to stop several times. The man using the phone explained to the irritated man that he was simply texting his 3-year-old daughter. The victim was identified as Chad Oulson, 43, of Land O’ Lakes, Fla. The gunman, Curtis Reeves, 71, was charged with second-degree murder.The NRA has been pretty quiet about this incident of gunplay, which occurred more than a week ago, so I called up my friend Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby's head honcho and asked him how he felt about the Florida shooting. Wayne was non-committal in his reply. "We have to let the courts work this one out," he said.What, you don't think we have to arm all movie ushers in response to this tragedy, like you want to arm third-grade teachers? "Of course that's a good idea. And if we did that, people would think twice about sticking their gum under the seats, too. But here we have a situation where a retired police captain was packing responsible heat to the movies, as any gun owner might do after that movie shooting in Colorado. He's a classic good guy with a gun and he ends up shooting a 43 year-old man with a wife and a toddler daughter. We have to ask ourselves, why?"Why? How about the guy had a bad temper and a loaded gun? How's that for why? "Only if we want to utterly disregard the actions of the victim. First off, he was texting in a movie theater. Every movie theater asks you to turn off your cell phone before the movie starts. So the guy was a reckless lawbreaker."I don't think the turning off your cell phone is exactly a law, Wayne. More like a rule. "So he's a rule breaker. Same difference. Next, he was texting during the movie previews. Everybody knows the previews are the best part of going to the movies, because most movies suck. So during the previews you can see the best parts of four or five other movies, before you settle in to watch the main movie, which probably sucks. So the guy was totally ruining everybody's cinematic experience."Still not a capital offense, Wayne. "Hear me out. Next, the victim threw his popcorn at the accused. Have you ever had popcorn thrown at you?"Yes. "Well then you know what a harrowing ordeal it can be. Thoughts flash through your mind. How much extra butter can my system absorb? Is this jalapeno popcorn, which is exactly like taking pepper spray to the face, if it actually hits you in the face and a loose kernel gets you in your eye? An armed man under a popcorn attack has to decide under the pressure of the moment whether to draw his weapon or risk losing it to some dangerous creation of Orville Redenbacher."I'm not buying it, Wayne. I think there's just too many guys with guns out there, itching to be heroes. A guy texting his three-year-old was bound to get shot sooner or later. "Typical liberal thinking. Has it ever occurred to you that the problem might be too many three-year-olds getting text messages? Let's address that, before we encumber our Second Amendment rights. "What if the shooter gets convicted, Wayne? What's the NRA going to say about him then? "Once again, no one considers the actions of the victim. He made the irresponsible choice to not have a gun. If he had been strapping a gat while he was shooting off text messages, he could have texted the shooter 'Hey, I have a gun, too.' Then both men would have realized they were both good guys with guns and settled in to watch the movie as buddies, knowing that if some schizophrenic bad guy busted in with an AK-47, they would join forces and blow him to bits."Why is it always good guys with guns versus bad guys with guns with you, Wayne? Here's an ex-cop who always figured he was a good guy, and the courts may well decide he's a bad one. It strikes me that it's only after you use your heater that people figure out which you are. Before you shoot somebody with your gun we don't know whether you're good or bad. You're just another guy with a gun. "That's the way of the gun, my friend. Be at peace with it is. Guys with guns aren't going anywhere. Try and make us."

In a shocking revelation, President Obama admitted last Friday that he cannot do the "Jedi Mind-Meld" with the Republican Congress in order to avoid the sequester. This unexpected confession of personal weakness cannot be regarded as a ruse by the President to lull the Dark Side into complacency; he botched the announcement by confusing the Mind Meld, which is actually Vulcan, with the Jedi version, the Mind Trick. Jedi-Americans were immediately appalled. All along we thought he was one of us. The way he swamped Hillary in the primaries and McCain in the general election, the sweeping rhetoric, people crying in the street when he won—all this spoke to us of the Force at work. Obviously, Obama had the type of physique that would look good draped in the shabby, brownish robes traditionally worn be intergalactic mystics like Alec Guinness. And basketball is the Jedi game—it's the only sport we'll drop our light sabers for. They cut the basketball scenes out of the original Star Wars, but anybody who is aware of the back story knows that Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, aided by the skills of nine-foot tall Chewbacca in the paint, played a legendary game of half-court three-on-three. Of course, like many Americans who voted for him, we were not always pleased with the actions he took in office. Chasing the phantom menace of health care and employing unmanned drones instead of tie-fighters to attack our enemies is not the Jedi way. Still, we understood Obama needed to compromise to get things done. Unemployment has affected us as much as any other group of Americans; when Obama announced he was not going to build a Death Star, we were crushed, as it would have provided jobs for us, dueling with the many squadrons of Imperial storm troopers it was bound to contain. We now agree with our friends in the Tea Party that the mainstream media always has Obama's back; they kept harping about Benghazi when the dark secret of his non-Jedi-ness was the real scandal that might have cost him the election. We Jedis were not particularly enthusiastic about Romney, but he did have the kind of robotic personality we were used to working with, particularly those of us employed in the auto industry in Ohio. But now Obama's fraud is revealed; we could just respond with hurt and bewilderment, but that, too, is not the Jedi way. So now we strike back by revealing that his birth certificate is indeed fake, forged by nerdy Ewoks. Let the truth be known: He wasn't born in Hawaii, but he wasn't born in Kenya, either. He was born on Tatooine! Go ahead, impeach the bastard.

After an undiagnosed loony raided a Colorado movie theater for the purpose of mass murder last week, killing twelve and injuring seventy-one during a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie, two things were bound to happen. One of them hasn't happened yet, but it is inevitable: the NRA will remind us that when our founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, they envisioned a future in which this nation would be crushed by tyranny if its citizens were not able to freely purchase 6,000 rounds of ammunition off the Internet any time they felt they needed a few bullets. The other is that some politician would say something stupid about the tragedy. We have a winner here. Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas, told a news outlet that the killing spree, instead of being a random act by a deranged individual, was a result of "ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs." It is apparent that Mr. Gohmert has not been following the Batman saga, either in the cinema or in print. Neither the Caped Crusader or any of his foes has ever used the phrase "Judeo-Christian." Batman typically uses much shorter words. In the comic books, which in my youth I followed much more closely than I've kept up with the movie series as an adult, there are a few longer words, such as "Aieeeeeee!" This word was used, usually encased in a dramatically jagged, vividly colored dialogue block, when one of Batman's enemies fell off a high place. Despite the large number of letters in the word, it is pronounced in just one syllable. Those are the kinds of words Batman uses. Two syllables sometimes, sure. Three, tops. Congressman Gohmert feels the tragedy would not have occurred if Americans had "placed a higher value on God." If the victims had been good Judeo-Christians, apparently, God would not have allowed them to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or He would have crushed the gunman with his "protective hands," another phrase employed by the Congressman, notwithstanding the fact that God does not usually work this way. One of the tenets that Judeo-Christians hold dear is that God must be thanked prodigiously for every fortunate occurrence, and held blameless for all tragedies. I wish my job worked that way. Not content with merely blaming the victims' being shot on their lack of faith, Gohmert also rebukes the dead and injured for not being armed. "Was there nobody (in the theater) carrying a gun who could have stopped this guy more quickly?" he asked. Apparently not, one of the reasons being that the theater didn't allow its patrons to carry guns. A lot of public places are like that, because the people who run them think that someone who carries a gun into a public venue is a lot more likely to be a random killer himself than to be thinking about protecting the public from one. Even if we could pass laws forbidding people from forbidding us to carry our guns, and every restaurant, theater, bar and airplane was full of men and women armed to the teeth and ready to bullet each other at the first glimmering of crisis, many people wouldn't carry guns. Many people can't even lift guns. They're a lot heavier in real life than actors make them appear in movies. Also, people look at you funny when you're packing, especially at weddings or the beach. This self-consciousness may in fact be the reason we can't have a fully-armed citizenry, as much as Congressman Gohmert regards that as a necessity for a Christian nation. The only person I know personally who carries a gun at all times, even though he has no more reason to do so than anybody else, is an ex in-law who lives in Arizona, where that is legal. Even his family regards him as a fat little wackjob, an incipient George Zimmerman who will hopefully never meet his personal Trayvon Martin. I spent about fifteen minutes in his company last year, watching him play video games with his cousins with his .357 strapped to his waist, presumably just in case predators starting breaking down the house door or smashing in the windows of the living room. Didn't make me feel any safer, but I noticed his cousins let him win all the time.

In a much needed first step towards preventing future scandals involving foreign prostitutes, the Secret Service announced today that all non-American sex workers hired by Secret Service agents in the future would be given code names.

"It's a big step for greater accountability on the part of both agents and the luscious young temptresses that help them stay sharp during the long hours they spend keeping bars and brothels secure in nations American officials plan to visit," a spokesman for the agency said. "The whole Cartegena deal happened because two prostitutes were using the same name—Isabella Boom Boom—and one of our eagle-eyed agents thought he was being double-billed. From now on, all foreign prostitutes will be given the code name of an American movie star as soon as their services are contracted.

"First class hookers will be given the identity of a major American hottie. When one of our agents says he just signed Angelina Jolie to a three-picture deal, we'll know that there's sequel action for our other operatives. If he's says he's just gotten a great shot of Cameron Diaz on the carpet, other agents will know the girl doesn't object to being photographed in the act.

"Likewise, streetwalkers that are merely serviceable will get code names that indicate specific types. A prostitute that needs a bath before you touch her is a Snooki. An older lady that's still got it goin' on is a Sharon Stone. A hooker that's way overpriced is a Kardashian.

"Cautions and alerts are built into any agency-approved communications. If an agent finds himself in an emergency situation, such as all the areas of interest on his prostitute plummeting towards the floor the minute she takes off her bra and/or underwear, he can sing out that he's with an Oprah or a Kirstie Alley. Underage is a Miley. In the direst of circumstances, i.e., the agent discovers he's with a transvestite or transsexual, he's got a Tom Cruise on his hands. If it's a completely washed-up cross-dresser, it's a Paulie Shore.

"Now that this system is in place, unfortunate situations like the one that developed at the OAS conference will be avoided. When Secret Service agents go forth to protect out President in the future, we'll know exactly who's been polishing their weapons, if you know what I mean."

I worked in and around the nightclub business for over twenty years, so going out on New Years Eve is unimportant to me. People who get stupid, blind, paralyzed drunk every day or at least every weekend certainly have issues, but at least they've learned to work around them. People who only get stupid, blind, paralyzed drunk once a year do so on New Year's Eve. They're not used to managing their erratic behavior. Those are people I wish to avoid.

So I selected a five-dollar movie from my Significant Other's cable movie menu and settled in for the evening, having no desire to be arrested for driving after four drinks or to be mangled by someone who's driving after twenty-seven. The movie was Bad Teacher, featuring Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. It had nice pungent dialogue and Cameron wears a short skirt as well as anyone in the movie business. It reminded me of the similarly titledBad Santa, another movie about a member of an occupation that is supposed to attract the morally upright (department store Santa, middle school teacher) who is an absolutely self-centered cheat and wastrel.

Fantasizing about cashing in on a Hollywood trend, I tried to imagine other careers where moral rectitude is demanded and a character with no morals whatsoever could attempt in a screenplay beginning with the word "Bad" to comic effect, but was frustrated that all my emerging seeds of genius (Bad Congressman, Bad Minister, Bad Archbishop of Boston) had already been played out in real life.

The only thing that bothered me about the movie was a tab in the corner of the screen that popped up when I paused it. "2001" the tab read. It didn't seem that I had failed to watch this movie for ten years. Of course, Cameron has been a movie star for some time, since "Something About Mary," which I know I'd seen more years ago than ten. Even Justin Timberlake has been a celebrity for years, long enough so that the teenage girls who used to throw underwear at him when he sang for 'N Sync are now raising teenage girls of their own, who are throwing their underwear at his successor in the field of teen heartthrobs who are named Justin, Justin Bieber.

It is one of the effects of aging, the study of which is eventually forced upon most of us, that the events of latter years seem to blend together while childhood events stand apart. The Vietnam War, the longest war in American history, was starting while I was still in kindergarten. Later, a friend in the lower grades had a copy of the "Ballad of the Green Berets" that I remember spending an afternoon listening to over and over with him, both dreaming of the day we would be old enough to fight in a war. After Johnson implied that he was not going to expand the war but did and Nixon promised to end the war but didn't, it turned out I was only a couple years short of being old enough to be drafted for that one.

The point is that war encompassed my whole childhood, passage through puberty and lasted until I was a legal adult. Like those years of my life, it seemed to last forever. On the other hand, the second longest war in American history, the current one in Afghanistan, has not seemed nearly so interminable, for various chronological, political and social reasons but also for me personally, since I was a middle-aged single father at its inception and will likely still be one for its scheduled end.

It seems like yesterday that Bill Clinton committed the impeachable offense of getting an oral sex act from Monica Lewinsky, although it was four Presidential elections and sixteen years ago. Google thinks it seems like yesterday, too; type in "monica" on the search bar and the first result that pops up is "monica lewinsky." Remember how much fun that scandal was? That's why it seems recent. I'm sure remembering that act of oral intercourse isn't that much fun for Bill, which probably makes it seem a lot longer ago for him. Especially if he hasn't had one since.

Another delusion I suffer from is that my musical tastes are current, when I can probably identify maybe four major pop stars who achieved fame after 1989. Knowing the complete musical canon of Flock of Seagulls hits is no longer a requirement for being hip. In my sober moments, I realize that.

So it just seemed sad to me, that apparently I had ignored "Bad Teacher" for ten years. I didn't feel melancholy for myself, really, but for Cameron and Justin. What had become of them? Was the skin on Cameron's fabulous legs turning to shoe leather, as a result of her baking them in a tanning bed to satisfy the cosmetic demands of her career? Was Justin losing his hair?

Just then my Significant Other, who was ignoring the movie in favor of mastering a thick novel, walked into the room. I pointed out the tab on the screen and said "Did you realize this movie is already ten years old?"

"It is not," she said. "It was out last year. Must be a keystroke error."

I looked it up, and she was right. I was immensely relieved. Nothing like getting ten years of your life back for New Years Eve.